The book 'A Tale of Two Cities' by Charles Dickens begins with a declaration that it was the best of times and the worst of times. In the town of Swansea where I was born at the beginning of 1943 it was quite definitely the worst of times. They were in the midst of war suffering a number of bombing raids by the German Luftwaffe leaving devastation in their wake with a once thriving town centre razed to the ground. For mechanically minded schoolboys in the years following, when they started to rebuild, it became the best of times because of all the machinery that the task of renewal involved. The particular machinery which grabbed our attention along with the general public was the mechanical excavator or digger by which it became more popularly known. They could be found anywhere; in town centre or outlying districts as they dug foundation ditches and trenches within sight of fascinated lookers watching ropes coiling and uncoiling to work the arms poking out of the front capturing the dirt with the machine turning to dump into a fleet of waiting tipper trucks and taken away.

For some schoolboys standing at a distance was not enough and we became adept at finding our way closer and sometimes, when space would allow, even on board to stand behind the driver pulling all the levers. I was one of them travelling all around the district and beyond to find new holes and construction sites. The diggers we found were made by a number of companies all with similar features but one of them was a little heavier and roomier than others and built by Ruston Bucyrus at their factory in the City of Lincoln. In time my parents allowed me to leave home at the age of 16 and take up a 5 year engineering apprenticeship with them at their Lincoln City factory. What follows is the story of those five years and visits to Swansea building sites that led to that decision.

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On the way you can accompany me visiting and talking to some of the drivers, visit a couple of scrap yards with some chums hunting for bits to build a trolley and end up with an old pram and dodge a fight with didicoy gipsy boys. We'll climb aboard some diggers and cranes for a chat with the drivers and how about clinging onto a Cat D8 bulldozer and Lima shovel digging rock; something you will never do today. Those were some of the things I was privileged to do in far off days without the distraction of a computer tablet. Come on then! If we stand around here all day talking we'll never get to Lincoln.